While some people pick up the bottle in addiction due to purely genetic affinity, others are using it as an escape. While my existence is hotly debated on hacker news whenever the topic arises, my escape was a struggle in trying to not address the gender incongruence between that which I was assigned at birth, and who I truly was. About a year after quitting alcohol, which is usually the recommended space people should give before making large life decisions, I had concluded two things after soul searching:
1. These feelings were never going to go away.
2. I needed to, and could, do something about it.
So I began transition. It was not easy, and communities like hacker news unfortunately are not typically kind about the subject, which is why I generalized to say it was a real kind of personal work that most will never have to endure.
It was something I intrinsically knew, from the moment I became remotely cognizant of the differences between men and women (about 5 years old). I didn’t have words for it, and frequently any mention of the notion either by myself or in popular culture was met with instant derision or comedy. So with the social brow beatings accumulated, I kept quiet, and tried to live as a man. The depression got worse, the drinking got worse, etc. The things that helped me most:
- My spouse, who was supportive and understanding the moment I came out
- My family, who were largely unsurprised by the news (my grandfather made an oddly supportive albeit sexist joke, saying “I knew that kid was a girl the moment she learned to talk and wouldn’t shut up!”)
- My friends, who were also completely unsurprised
- My own physiology, in that I discovered in the process of obtaining HRT that I am intersex, which honestly explained a lot.
Not OP, but I can speak about what this meant to me: Primarily facing my emotions, even learning how to feel emotions again, then learning how to understand and communicate them in a way where I stay true to myself, and live life on my own terms.
Before I started doing this work I approached everything logically. "I shouldn't feel this way, because x, y and z are objectively good." "If I present things this way, I'll get people to agree with me." "I don't want to do x, but it will make so-and-so happy."
It never worked for long, and alcohol has a nice way of suppressing those feelings, as well as the little negative voice in your head that tends to accompany those suppressed emotions.
Rather than trying to logic my way to acceptance and contentment, I've had to learn how to wade into my emotions and figure out productive ways to express what they're telling me.
It's work to improve the relationship you have with yourself; it's still a work in progress for me.
I’m coming up on my second year sobriety anniversary, if it’s not too personal could you talk more about this:
“A real kind of personal work that most people will never have to put into themselves”?